Loren, 75 and looking 20 years younger in a zippered skirt that shows off her phenomenal legs, spoke to us in a Manhattan hotel suite about her career, working with Day-Lewis and the other women, and Federico Fellini, whose semiautobiographical film "8 1/2" inspired the Broadway show "Nine" and now the movie.

Q:You've been quoted as saying that Daniel intimidated you. When I mentioned that to him, he said it was daft.

A: What is "daft"?

Q:It means "crazy." He thinks that you should be at a place where nobody should intimidate you.

A: Oh, really? It's a question of character.

Q:How do you mean?

A: It's not a question of being fragile. It's a question of respecting so much the person that is opposite you in the way he works, the way he concentrates on what he has to do, and then when you are confronted with him you feel like you've not done enough to be able to be at his level. This is in the mind, of course. Maybe it was the character of Fellini. Maybe it was not Daniel, it was Fellini who was intimidating me.

Q:So did you know him?

A: Not very well. I met him four or five times in my life because we were supposed to do something together that never happened. You asked me, "Did you really know Fellini, how he was?" I couldn't tell you. But maybe not even his wife would know how he was.

Q:Were you mostly in Hollywood then (in the early '60s) or going back and forth?

A: Back and forth. And then I established myself in Italy because I was doing so many films that were so successful that I said, "That's my country."

Q:Do you think Hollywood knew what to do with you?

A: They tried. But if you don't have the roots somewhere, it's very difficult for people to work with you. Because you are a different person from them. They don't know you, really. They don't know how you feel. I think it was a very good school for me because I learned English rather well and I happened to work with so many actors. And then I went back to my own country. And that's where I made it.

Q:Did you resist doing this movie at all?

A: No, because I was fascinated by the idea of being in an American musical, which has always been my dream. It was a chance to do something that I had never done before.

Q:Did you hang out with the other women?

A: Always. We had lunch together every day. They never ate anything. I was the only one eating.

Q:Do you think being thin is overrated?

A: Yes.

Q:What was their attitude toward you?

A: Wonderful. We were very friendly. People thought, "These ladies together, what's going to happen, fire, fire, fire!" Nothing of the sort. Also because Nicole came with her little baby and husband, it was like a family group. I got very friendly with Penélope because she's Spanish.

Q:You don't work much anymore.

A: I work when I feel like I can do something that pleases me, that I think I can give a little more than I've given up to yesterday. Now I'm doing a film about my mother. The story of my mother keeps me company these days.

Q:I'm wondering if you understand her more now than you did then.

A: No, I'm very pleased because doing this film I know that when I thought I understood her, I really did.